SHOTS FIRED

A short documentary about courage, communications, and resilience in the face of a school shooting

What Happened?

Just before school was about to start on the morning of April 27, 2015, a student walked down a flight of stairs from the second floor into the Commons, an area teaming with North Thurston High School (NTHS) students. The student had a .357 Magnum revolver in one hand. He raised the gun and fired into the ceiling. Chaos erupted. A teacher saw the shooter. So did the principal. The student fired a second shot. What happened next is the best case scenario in the face of such terror.

SHOTS FIRED is a filmic case study of what worked well and what could have worked better from a communications technology standpoint in dealing with a critical incident.

Why make this film?

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Congress recognized the need for a nationwide interoperable communications system dedicated to public safety. Hard to imagine such a system does not already exist. Nearly 3000 victims died in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. Among them were 343 firefighters and 23 New York City police officers. Why did so many more firefighters die? They didn’t get the command to evacuate the collapsing towers. They were on a different communications frequency than law enforcement.

Washington OneNet is our state program office working with the federal First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) to design a nationwide wireless broadband network dedicated to public safety.

Funding for this project and all OneNet activities is provided by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) through their State and Local Implementation Grant Program (SLIGP)